Month: May 2010

For my final election blog, I am re-publishing the open letter that I wrote on 6 May to the new secretary of state, which I shall be delivering to Michael Gove today:

Dear Michael,

Congratulations on your appointment as secretary of state for education. You have just started the best job in government, with the future of the country literally in your hands and a workforce with the strongest possible commitment to maximising the life chances of every young person.

Writing on behalf of the leaders of that workforce, I ask you to work with us. We would particularly ask you to remember the following ten things:

1. Pass fewer education laws. Do not over-regulate schools and colleges. Put in place just enough regulation to ensure that one school’s success is not at the expense of another.

2. Maintain the direction of change from the culture of competition that existed in the 1980s and 1990s to the culture of collaboration and partnership between institutions that has developed strength in recent years. Create more incentives for schools to work in partnership.

3. Continue to increase in real terms the proportion of the national budget spent on schools and colleges. The next generation of young people should not have their education jeopardised as a result of an economic crisis not of their making.

4. Over time, improve the distribution of that funding so that young people are not disadvantaged by their postcode.

5. Continue to build schools for the future and prioritise the renewal of the schools with the worst buildings.

6. Strengthen post-14 qualifications by introducing a general diploma with a broad core of knowledge and skills.

7. Strengthen assessment by building a cohort of chartered assessors – senior professionals externally accredited to carry out in-course assessment to external standards – and use these assessments as a proportion of final grades in all external qualifications.

8. Engage parents more strongly in the education of their children – and recognise that they don’t want to run schools.

9. Introduce intelligent accountability for schools and colleges. Make it robust, fair and proportionate. Make quality assurance and self-evaluation the centrepiece of the accountability system.

10. Only through our work at school and college level can your policies become successful, so make sure that all these policies are rooted in the reality of implementation.

With every good wish for your tenure as secretary of state. May it be longer, more effective and less interventionist than the average of your predecessors,

With talks now taking place between the Liberal Democrats and Labour, independent commentators are reflecting on the greater similarities between their main policies. On education policy, however, that is not the case.

Both the LibDem and Labour parties have been specific about maintaining funding increases for schools, although the LibDems have been more generous. Both argue for improved professional development and a stronger role for local authorities – for the LibDems, this is for all schools; for Labour, this is only for schools that are not academies. And that’s about it.

In addition, all three parties favour some sort of pupil premium, want to expand Teach First and the graduate teacher programme, tackle bullying and improve discipline.

The LibDems have been particularly critical of Labour’s centralised approach to education policy and could hardly expect Labour to introduce the kind of Education Freedom Act proposed in the LibDem manifesto.

Perhaps surprisingly, there are more common areas between the Labour and Tory manifestos. Both would increase the number of academies, free from local authority influence. Both would start 14-19 technical academies. They would also strengthen home-school agreements, help successful schools to take over schools in difficulty, retain key stage 2 tests and implement the recommendations of Lord Browne’s review of university fees. This last point is a critical difference with the LibDems since it has enormous financial implications, both for the Treasury and for the higher education sector.

Finally, it is interesting to note that, whereas the education portfolio used to be a Cabinet post for politicians on the way down the greasy pole, it is now firmly established as a job for those on the way up. The three leading candidates for the Labour leadership – Ed Balls, Alan Johnson and David Miliband – have all been education ministers. Michael Gove is a close confidant of David Cameron and David Laws is a key member of the LibDem negotiating team. Indeed, it is not too far-fetched to suggest that David Laws could become secretary for state for education in either a LibCon or a LibLab coalition.

Like the election, this blog is lasting longer than expected but, with Conservative-Liberal Democrat talks continuing into a third day, I looked again at their respective education policies.

They agree on the need for a pupil premium (although the Conservatives haven’t said how they will pay for it, so the two parties may disagree about that), the need to reform league tables and Ofsted (although their recipes are very different), expansion of Teach First and the graduate teacher programme, tackling bullying and improving discipline (but the specific policies are different). They are also agreed on not adopting Labour’s ideas of a school report card, pupil and parent guarantees and the licence to practise.

They disagree on the future of key stage 2 tests and the way in which the national curriculum should be reformed, although they agree on the need for reform. They disagree on the future of diplomas. Most fundamentally, they agree on the idea of having new providers of schools, but whereas the Tories would set these schools free, the LibDems would bring them under local authority control. This contrast on the role of local authorities is also evident in their respective policies on academies.

There is a simple way to resolve the bargaining between the two potential political partners on which education policies to adopt. A LibCon government, or a minority Tory administration supported by the LibDems, should restrict new policy making to the areas on which they agree. In that way, schools and colleges could concentrate on the core job of raising standards and the government could take the credit for it.

The government can hardly claim credit for the 2010 results (although that might not stop them doing so) and there might be another election before the next set of results. So let’s have some policies to cheer us all up in the meantime. As well as ‘Troops to Teachers’, let’s make the most of a new group of recently unemployed and have ‘ex-MPs to teachers’. They could even set up their own small schools in duckhouses, surrounded by a moat to keep the attendance figures high.

Or the new government could implement my favourite manifesto commitment – the Monster Raving Loony Party’s pledge to fit all bright children with dimmer switches.

So it’s to be a hung parliament – but will that mean a coalition or a minority administration? Which parties will co-operate and who will be prime minister? And, of particular importance to ASCL, who will be secretary of state for education, children, families, or whatever the department will be called?

First, though, on a personal note, I am particularly sorry to see that so many former education ministers with whom I have enjoyed working have lost their seats – Jim Knight, Charles Clarke, Jacqui Smith, Phil Hope and Bill Rammell – and at least two of the most dedicated members of the select committee over the years, Jonathan Shaw and Paul Holmes.

All the talk last night and this morning on the television and radio emphasised the negatives of the new political arithmetic but, ever the optimist, I want to mention three of the positives of the current situation.

First, there has been stronger engagement with the political process in this election than in any previous election in my memory. ASCL members report that this has particularly been the case with the young people in schools and colleges.

Second, we might now have less legislation. That will be a great benefit to schools and colleges still struggling to put in place the huge amount of legislation and regulation of recent years.

Fewer bills also mean that each will get more time in parliament and so we can hope that legislation in this session will be more thoroughly considered than has been the case with recent bills.

Third, single governing parties tend to become legislative juggernauts, pushing their half-formed ideas into law, often before they have been properly tested and therefore with little evidence of whether they will work in practice.

So a Labour-led coalition or Labour minority government would be unlikely to find a parliamentary majority for the licence to practise, the pupil and parent guarantees or the school report card. But they would find sufficient support to continue to build stronger school-to-school collaboration.

A Conservative-led coalition or Tory minority government would benefit from Liberal Democrat support on parent-initiated schools, although only if they remain part of the local authority system, and on broadening the range of qualifications (such as the IGCSE) that can be taken in state schools. The Tories would be unlikely, however, to find sufficient support for their plan to make it easy to become an academy and break away from the local authority.

A coalition of either colour could work to introduce a pupil premium to create a fairer funding system. That won’t be easy at a time of funding difficulty, but a start could at least be made on devising the formula and working out how to achieve it over time.

With a Eurozone financial crisis, stock markets plummeting across the world and a huge hole to repair in the UK public finances, the new government will have more than enough on its plate. On education policy the highest priority of the new secretary of state is likely to be discussing with Treasury ministers how frontline educational services can best be funded in the current financial climate, given the importance to the national economy of having a highly educated and well trained workforce for the 21st century. ASCL’s line in the sand is the 0.7% real-terms increase announced by Ed Balls, which we expect to be honoured by the new government.

So my suggestion for the new government (in addition to those in my open letter in yesterday’s blog) is to forget the idea of a new education bill and instead seek cross-party consensus on supporting schools and colleges to do better those things that don’t need any new laws or regulations. That means concentrating on raising educational standards, supporting the education of the disadvantaged, working out how best to engage parents better in the education of their children, supporting schools on behaviour, improving assessment and testing, improving vocational qualifications and embedding the diploma, reforming Ofsted, attracting the brightest and the best into teaching, and reforming accountability to remove perverse incentives.

At last it’s election day and the real poll takes the place of the interminable opinion polls. The time to comment on the three party manifestos is past as we begin to look to the future. So here’s ASCL’s open letter to the new secretary of state:

Dear Sir or Madam (well, anything can happen in politics, so it might not be Balls, Gove or Laws),

Congratulations on your appointment as secretary of state for education. You have just started the best job in government, with the future of the country literally in your hands and a workforce with the strongest possible commitment to maximising the life chances of every young person.

Writing on behalf of the leaders of that workforce, I ask you to work with us. We would particularly ask you to remember the following ten things:

1. Pass fewer education laws. Do not over-regulate schools and colleges. Put in place just enough regulation to ensure that one school’s success is not at the expense of another.

2. Maintain the direction of change from the culture of competition that existed in the 1980s and 1990s to the culture of collaboration and partnership between institutions that has developed strength in recent years. Create more incentives for schools to work in partnership.

3. Continue to increase in real terms the proportion of the national budget spent on schools and colleges. The next generation of young people should not have their education jeopardised as a result of an economic crisis not of their making.

4. Over time, improve the distribution of that funding so that young people are not disadvantaged by their postcode.

There was a lot more heat than light in the debate between the three main party education spokesmen on yesterday’s Daily Politics Show. With all three talking at once at times, Andrew Neil said “I now know what it’s like to be a teacher. Speak when you are spoken to.”

There were no real answers, so we still don’t know how the Conservatives intend to afford their ‘free’ schools, nor how Labour would reduce the degree of centralisation of policy. We did learn that all three believed in both school uniform and the preservation of A levels, although David Laws, in giving a one-word answer as requested, didn’t make clear that this would be part of the general diploma, as advocated by ASCL.

ASCL was mentioned twice – by Michael Gove in support of wider powers of search, and by Ed Balls in opposition to the abolition of appeals panels.

All were agreed that the persistent question of the gap between the educational achievement of the haves and the have-nots is the critical issue to address, but the hustings format does not permit speakers to go into the depth necessary to provide satisfactory answers to such questions.

Nor does it allow time for policy to be articulated with the passion shown by Gordon Brown in his speech yesterday to the Citizens UK Forum at Central Hall Westminster, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BA2Jz7xIXw. Off the leash he is a formidable and passionate speaker and his commitment to social justice shines through. If he had been able to show this side of himself in the televised debates, the election campaign might have been very different.

ASCL members learnt a lot more about the education policies of the three parties by having three separate sessions at its annual conference and not a single hustings session.

The hustings at NAHT annual conference yesterday told us nothing new and shed no further light on the parties’ views on key stage 2 tests, with no question on the topic being asked to the three main party spokesmen. According to their manifestos, the Conservatives will retain key stage 2 tests and make them ‘more rigorous’. Labour will publicise teacher assessment levels alongside test results in 2011, with a hint that further reform will follow. The LibDems want to ‘scale back’ key stage 2 tests and use teacher assessment with external moderation.

This year’s tests look set to be disrupted by a substantial but uncertain proportion of primary schools, impatient for change and unwilling to wait for Ed Balls’s slower pace of reform. The legality of the union’s action, being carried out in conjunction with the NUT, is not being tested in the courts and primary school governors are being placed by the secretary of state in the difficult position of finding a way ahead. As a primary school governor myself, I am very glad that I shall not have to broker those arrangements, as the head is not boycotting the tests.

If one party has a clear majority in parliament and a secretary of state is appointed on Friday 7 May, his first action could be to go to the courts and ask for the action to be declared illegal. The legality of the action has not been challenged by local authorities, which are the employers in many of the affected schools, so perhaps a new secretary of state would not want to start his term of office with what might be seen as a high-risk assault on two of the unions with which he will subsequently have to work. Of course, if there is a hung parliament and 7 May signals the start of a period of political bargaining, there will effectively be no secretary of state that day and the union action will go ahead unchallenged when the tests start on Monday 10 May.

Secondary schools can only look on at the events and wonder what will happen to their accountability when this year group has no externally verified judgement on their achievement at age 11 and thus no baseline for their progress during their years at secondary school.

Of more lasting importance is the wider question of whether the new government will take the action necessary to improve external assessment in England. The spat about key stage 2 tests in 2010 is only a small part of this issue.